Killer Elite

EPILOGUE

Neither Colonel Macpherson nor Spike Allen ever divulged to me the identity of the committee’s founder, but the week before I met them there was an Associated Press news release: David Stirling, Founder of Elite British Unit, Dies.

London-Colonel Sir David Stirling, 74, who in World War II founded the Special Air Service, an elite British Special Forces unit, died Sunday after a long illness, according to his biographer, Alan Hoe. The Special Air Service, or SAS, with its motto “Who Dares Wins,” remained on active duty after the war and has kept its reputation for swift, clandestine and effective action. Born Archibald David Stirling on November 15, 1915, the son of a Scottish brigadier general, he joined the Scots Guards at the outbreak of World War II. Six months later he transferred to No. 3 Commando Group of the Brigade of Guards and went with them to the Middle East. He persuaded military authorities that “an army within an army” was needed to make secret raids against the enemy. With six officers and sixty enlisted men, he became known as the “Phantom Major” among the troops of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps after destroying at least 250 enemy aircraft and scores of fuel and ammunition dumps in attacks behind German lines. In 1943 Colonel Stirling was taken prisoner in Tunisia. He escaped, was recaptured and was transferred to Colditz Castle prison camp in Germany, where he remained a captive for the rest of the war…

On the morning of Thursday, February 12, 1991, an IRA action unit mortared the Gulf War Cabinet meeting of Prime Minister John Major at 10 Downing Street while, a few hundred yards away at the Wellington Barracks, a great assembly of SAS men, past and present, converged to pay their last respects to the Phantom Major.

Sir Fitzroy Maclean, giving tribute to the man whose name would always be synonymous with the Special Air Service, mentioned that, “Even his closest friends seldom knew what he was up to.”

The keening notes of “Flowers of the Forest” played by a single Scots piper reached out from the Guards Chapel to the deserted streets of Whitehall and across the frozen lakes of St. James’s Park.

Colonel Tommy Macpherson and Spike Allen knelt in different pews to the words of the Celtic Blessing: Deep peace of the running wave to you Deep peace of the flowing air to you Deep peace of the quiet earth to you Deep peace of the shining stars to you Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you…

Outside the snowflakes settled, light as feathers, over Whitehall.